Posts by Tom 38

Apache is phenomenally configurable in its mode of operation. If you choose the default chosen by most distributors, you get a mode of operation - prefork - where performance does blow. They choose this mode by default for two reasons, PHP and ease of use for their users.

PHP can run in two modes, an interpreter embedded in to the web server, or as a standalone process with worker children/threads that communicates with the webserver via FCGI. In the first mode, it is easier to setup a PHP app, simply put PHP files in a directory served by the webserver, in the second you need to configure FCGI - its not hard configuration, but it is extra work. Distros prefer not to do that, so prefer the first mode, however the first mode can only run in apache in prefork mode, therefore they choose prefork.

Each worker in prefork has a PHP interpreter active in it, whether it is serving static files or running PHP apps. This means you have more interpreters 'active' than are necessary - wasting resources. Plus, you can only handle as many simultaneous connections as you can handle simultaneous workers - regardless of what those connections are doing. So prefork is a dog, and to be avoided.

Apache has other modes. We use "event", which is a hybrid thread/process model, basically the same model as nginx, and guess what, it performs just as well as nginx. Plus, we can still use the billion or so apache modules out there. We have to use a fcgi-wrapper for our web apps, but this is good anyway as it allows us to control how many PHP processes are active at any one time, which prevents you having too many DB connections, which, if you've ever run a dynamic website will know, is usually the limiting factor of any hosted site.

nginx, as a bare bones web server, doesn't have the option of the prefork model, nor of embedding PHP directly in to the webserver, so you need to configure a php-fcgi wrapper for each app, just like we do for apache-event.

tl;dr - apache not dead, read the manual and learn how to configure it for performance.

Re: 10 Types of bosses

@ hammarbtyp that "small company" must have been quite big. Small companies don't have share options and are not publicly traded.

What drivel, who said anything about "publicly traded" shares? Share options can be had in any company where the ownership of the company is vested in shares, typically they are used to allow new equity investment or to provide an equity share.

For instance, Jim and Bob own a catering company, Jim has 50 shares, Bob has 50 shares. They have an employee, Phil, who is so essential to the business that Jim and Bob create an extra 20 shares, and grant an option to Phil that he can buy the shares for £20,000. This is a share option - if Phil executes the option, he will own 1/6th of the company, and Jim and Bob will own 5/12ths each.

hammarbtyp is describing a situation where Jim and Bob keep telling Phil that "you are so essential, we're going to have to see about getting you some equity", without actually doing shit. It happens all the time.

Re: Spending

Agree we should stop aid to India tho' - or be honest and admit it's a bribe for trade and good relations.

I thought it was reparations for pillaging the Raj?

Re: Tragic News

"as Windows fades in to irrelevance"

I guess you missed Microsoft's record results last week?

Guess you missed the difference between Windows and Microsoft?

Re: Clearly I am out of touch ..

Clearly too young to remember web pages with JS mouse trails .

Re: How is this going to help...

Crikey, since when did register forums merge with the daily mail?

Branson pays no tax because he gives all his income to charity - whether he lives on his island paradise is up to him. Whether you use your SHOUTY RIGHT WING BOLLOCKS typing or otherwise.

Sometimes when you are skiing, it can also be snowing. When it is snowing, the sky is white, the ground is white, the clouds (which you are in) are white. A big glowing red line in the HUD would delineate the piste from the off piste, and perhaps stop you accidentally skiing off a cliff in bad vis. Things that stop me killing myself I generally consider "useful" and not "part of the video game".

Similarly, if you're on a long piste, is that bloke in the black 1km downhill your mate, or just another person wearing black. Did they go left or right at the junction? Which restaurant were we skiing to again*?

Plus, skiing isn't necessarily sport, it's just spending some nice time in the mountains moving from place to place on skis. It's not all Ski Sunday grand slalom races y'know.

Re: Twitter ticker = TWIT?

You ascribe a value per user and multiply by the number of users.

Mind you I did have Isabela excuse her self once to go and get her children early - mainly because there was a drung cartel gun fight across the normal road route.

You were one character away from a highly amusing typo - I'd love to see a "dung cartel gun fight" - "Eh jefe, these is MY caca de burro"

Re: Comment from the Cockwomble in question

tl;dr

Glad you class yourself as a bumpkin, but 200m from the exchange puts you in the middle of the locale. Furthermore, your locale is large enough that your exchange has been unbundled.

This article is not talking about you, since you are, effectively, a townie - you live in an area where you have access to multiple wholesale providers, OFCOM would class your exchange as Market 2 (2-3 wholesale providers) or Market 3 (4+ wholesale providers, fully deregulated).

This article is talking about people connected to Market 1 exchanges, where BTw are the only provider. People like my old man, 8km from a Market 1 exchange, no ADSL2+, no 21CN WBC, 2 Meg on a good day and on a bad day nothing.

Re: Lots of old thinking here

Who said anything about RAID????

You did. You called it "3 copies in a cluster", which is what old thinking calls a 3 way RAID-1 mirror.

Re: This is what the Surface RT should have been

Thanks for the correction

No problem, correcting people on the internet is like one of my top 5 favourite things that isn't a bodily function.

Re: Good advice, 5 years ago

Why does everyone on IT forums think they're an expert on things they literally have never ever tried to do?

I dunno, is it the same reason mumsnet and Claire Perry think they can tell us how to use computers?

You're alternative is going to result in a lot of people dying. The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat so it is more difficult for a virus to completely out-compete them.

Except they don't eat viruses, they eat bacteria - the clue is in the name, bacteriophage, bacteria destroyer.

Nice try, no cylindrical smoking object.

Re: Interbreeding and species

This is oxymoronic. To a good first approximation, the definition of a species divide is that (fertile) interbreeding does not occur across the boundary.

If all things were nice and neat and tidy, then that would be a good definition of a species, however inter-species breeding is not uncommon, and whilst most interspecific hybrids are infertile, some individuals are not, which can lead to a new hybrid species. For example, ligers (lion/tiger) and tiglons (tiger/lion) are largely infertile, but certain individuals are not and have reproduced.

Besides which, there is a good argument for saying this it is intra-specific hybridization between H. sapiens sapiens and H. sapiens neanderthalis, both being sub species of H. sapiens.

Even if they are not sub species, interspecific hybrids forming new species is not unknown either - the Red Wolf may be (opinions differ) a coyote/grey wolf hybrid.

Re: It's all to do with the potential to watch TV

Everything you have said is wrong.

Re: so... surely there must also be the opposite ?

My cousins have a cat called Nancy, only they weren't too good at sexing kittens.

He doesn't seem to mind too much.

At present? Microsoft have offered that for about 7 years via App-V and Softgrid and pretty much own that market space...

Well, MS own the "MS hosted containerisation" market, for sure.

PS: Solaris Zones are 9 years old, BSD jails are 13 years old..

Re: Since when...?

Since when it THC an hallucinogen?

Start taking it in appropriate quantities for the hallucinogen effect to take, well, effect. If you apologise the quoting from wikipedia, there is a famous autobiographical book called 'The Hashish Eater', by Fitz Hugh Ludlow, which documents his exploration of cannabis via an extract called "Tilden's Extract", which is a solid that you eat. One researcher said:

Ludlow consistently talked of “hasheesh” but in fact he took the solid extract of Cannabis Indica which was roughly twice as potent as the crude resin and ten times as potent as marijuana. A rough calculation shows that his intake was equivalent to about 6 or 7 marijuana cigarettes per dose, i.e. at the hallucinatory rather than at the euphoriant level prevalent in contemporary North American use.

Re: "loss-making postal service"?

No, it is being sold because the pension obligations of RM were crippling the company and the exchequer. By using financial jiggery pokery, that cost is taken away from RM so that a profitable company can be created that is not a state subsidised monstrosity. Without this, RM would still be loss making, and not a soul would have considered paying anything for shares in it.

Re: Pathetic

You come here for the news?

Re: @Khaptain

Most wars might not be about religion, but the winners of wars invariably assert their religion over the vanquished. Its not two armies having a go at each other, but "plague of the firstborn" is pretty religious.

BTW, lots of your "non religious wars" have strong religious elements. The Korean war was between the largely Christian, western backed south, and the largely irreligious/personality cult north, where Christians are persecuted.

Rome and Carthage fought many wars, the later ones involving the Vandal Kingdom of Carthage and Rome where largely fought over the Arian Christian Vandals oppressing the Roman Catholic locals. The whole of Roman Africa and the Levant were overran with the Muslim expansion, a strongly religious war.

Muslims and Christians have been fighting over the Balkans and Eastern Europe for hundreds of years. Ottomans go forward, they go back ,they go forward.

Face it, since man could think he has been justifying killing other people because their sky fairies aren't his sky fairies. The justification for going and taking your neighbours stuff is not that it you want it, it's that you want it and he isn't of your (religious) tribe.